RecordingstudioEssay Preview: RecordingstudioReport this essayHappy New Year to you all! I hope your holidays were great and you are ready for an amazing 2007! I want to personally thank you for all of your on-going contributions to one of the most successful years in Equinox history! You continue to drive the heart and soul at Equinox and I thank you for always taking care of our members..
When you work for a high profile company like Equinox, you are held to high profile standards and expectations among the company, the industry and really, the world at this point. Such high visibility brings exciting challenges for us to always be the very best we can be. As your Director, one of my biggest responsibilities is to continuously evaluate our portfolio of programs and compare it to our competitorÐŽ¦s programs and to the industry as a whole. I constantly ask myself:
Do we have the best programs at Equinox?Do we continue to be the ones creating the trends that others follow?Are we still the dominant force in this industry?Do we have the best instructors at Equinox?Do we continue to look to you, our instructors, as resources for creating new trends and classes?Is there consistency in the quality and member experience from class to class and location to location across the country?ItÐŽ¦s clear we continue to offer a very strong program overall. And in almost all cases we have the best instructors overall! YouÐŽ¦ll hear more about our plans for standard of Excellency in our EquinoxEmersion training later this year.
It is important that our programs grow and evolve to continuously challenge and inspire our members daily. A big part of our job to develop new and creative ideas, always exploring new venues (some never even considered for fitness) somewhere, that might just fly at Equinox!
As a management team, we have always looked to you all as ÐŽ§resourcesÐŽÐÐŽKyou are the most creative people in the industry and you should view us as the facilitators of your ideas! If you have a great, new idea, a new class that you would like to develop, we want to explore the program development possibilities with you. I invite you to submit your ideas to me, directly.
I am really interested in seeing a new thought process in our GF programmingÐŽKIn other words, in addition to our amazing roster of offerings, I am not so interested in ÐŽ§re-packagingÐŽÐ existing formats as I am in seeing a new approach, format, even non-traditional format, completely outside of our industry, if it can make sense. Sometimes these things blossom into amazing programs and sometimes they donÐŽ¦t, but I CAN tell you, if we commit to it, it WILL be supported.
You already know that our GFM team is the strongest in the country and that they are as committed to you and the industry as anyone! Good examples of what I am looking for are programs like:
the INKA Suspension training group format that we will be rolling out this quarter, created by one of our own in Darien, Ct.,the new program, CHAOS, designed by Dr. Paul Juris and the GFM team that you will see later this month in NYC,Cardio Core Motion, designed by Michael Carson in LA (I think that will be the next new ÐŽ§cardioÐŽÐ)Full Moon Yoga, ChicagoÐŽ¦s own Jeff Howard, that actually takes place outside, on the scheduled full moon every month (will begin in 2nd quarter).This is the kind of thinking and the type of approach to GF that I am talking about and anticipating for 2007.I also want to mention that overall, as I take classes with you all, across the country, I am so proud to be in your roomÐŽKthe professionalism, creativity and quality experience that you bring to Equinox is outstanding. That said, in some cases, though, when I look at specific clubs, classes, formats, and instructors, I do see hints of ÐŽ§complacencyÐŽÐa
I do think my first year at equinox, I was disappointed to see I am less than enthusiastic about courses and classes that I may or may not have been learning at all. As I do get better at one, each is worth its own post and has been part of a long journey along that path and I am enjoying it. It has been a great experience and the quality of our classes and experiences will certainly continue to improve.I could go on and on about what the next step will be, because this is such a large program in itself and in many areas that it might be helpful.It will continue to be a very hard program to handle but it is being taught in several areas with the help of those who work on equinox. I am working to expand the program in order to provide an environment of better performance experience.If you are interested in getting a job in equinox, this link is for you.I was in an earlier post about equinox class and training and the way things played a key role in equinox class training. I was very impressed with what I saw that went into that. If you have a degree or have experience in the use of energy, you can do some of that too (as do I on the subject!).However, for those who have done a fair bit of exercise, training and training to get up to speed up the time and weight used, and to improve on each one, I would suggest some of these exercises on a regular frequency to yourself-in the context of the program.Somehow, some of the more common exercises I was learning, I believe, were all based on a small group of students and coaches and were mostly performed by the well-placed or experienced (and trained, as in “good” or “better”) but sometimes people who had to play the game of equinox were really focused on what they were doing or what they were getting wrong on a day-to day basis. I think with an emphasis on being mentally and physically in control of your surroundings, as well as getting your mind through the hard tasks, what will be helpful for equinox classes might be to get you to focus on the things that are important and do the most to prepare you for the task at hand: to get up, get down, and do what you want and to take care of each other. There definitely is a focus on working out in the gym that is very important and to be effective at doing that, you are going to need the skills and training you are getting.That being said, I wouldn’t go into that too much on personal-though there is certainly a ton of things you can learn from our program and there are lessons that you can learn from it.Here is one common point I made throughout the program. Let me quote a passage from the beginning of the program: “The time for preparation is in the past. Let your mind dwell on your training. Think of how you will spend the rest of your life. Then you can go out and do whatever you want to do.” In this, you will learn from our experience with that. I think one benefit of our programs lies in that we are using time and place and that the things that you can do on the weekends, for instance, can really keep you on track on what’s important and why you should do a session to plan for training that weekend.